Every Tuesday afternoon, I dash back from the high school to make it in time for the beginning of the seniors’ group at church. If pressed, I would say that the official name of the group is “The Friendship Circle,” but there are definitely variations on the name. Johnny, one of the youth ministers that I work with at the high school, will often give me a lift back to the church when I’m running late (which—plot twist—is most of the time). He’s taken to calling it “The Circle of Trust.” John, the man who leads the group, is our pastoral assistant who moved to Belfast from Zambia several years ago. He has a ready white smile and his prayers are like poetry; he prefers to call his group “Friendship Circles”—which I have to admit, I kind of like. It almost suggests a ripple effect.
The group lasts for an hour and fifteen minutes, and no meeting is the same. Sometimes guests come to speak about local outreach ministries, sometimes we get a lesson in the history of Dundonald, and sometimes things get a little competitive with a game of bocce ball. But the one thing that never varies, the one thing that you can always expect even if the mountains were to crumble into the seas, is…(can you guess?)…tea and biscuits. Always a wee cup of tea.
And although the activities are fun, my favorite times are the spontaneous conversations over tea. A few weeks ago, for example, someone brought up the war—not The Troubles, but The War.
It started with David, our minister. He had gotten a call from the BBC, which is in the midst of making a program to preserve some of the memories and stories of those who were alive during World War II. The BBC wanted to interview the members of the Friendship Circle.
“So,” David asked, rubbing his hands together, “how many of you were alive during the war?”
At first, there was nothing. No response. Then a voice, “Oh, give over, Shirley, we all know you were.”
A pause.
“Well, maybe I was,” retorts Shirley, “but the last thing I’m going to do is speak to some stranger from the BBC about it.”
There’s an appreciative murmur. “Aye, nor I,” agrees Dorothy, while Vera and Jean nod.
“But do you not want to tell your story?” asks David.
At first, Shirley’s not certain that she does. But then she shifts in her seat and begins: “Belfast wasn’t the only place where the bombs fell, you see. They dropped them as far out as Comber and Newtownards. The night that the Germans flew over my house, I had a dream. I dreamed that the planes were roaring over our rooftop and all the streets were burning. I was fourteen, but still I woke up sobbing. I ran to my parents’ room and pleaded with them to come to the shelter. They argued with me, saying that they hadn’t heard any sirens, but I knew that the Germans were coming. I knew it. Almost as soon as we reached the shelter, the sirens started, and we could hear the planes. They bombed our house. I think we would have died if I hadn’t had that dream.”
Shirley has started something. The stories come faster now, from different corners of the room. Joan sits next to me, and she leans over to tell me about the time that she was running home from her friend’s house after curfew. “Proper running, I was, along those winding country roads. It was so dark that I had to turn on my torch.” A blackout warden saw her light bouncing and flickering in the middle of the field, and she was hard pressed to convince him that she wasn’t signaling the Germans. “Fined me a shilling, so he did. Just for a bit of torchlight”
Others tell about sitting on stools in their shelters, their knees trembling as they waited for the sounds of the planes; another tells about trying to make it to a shelter after the bombing had started. She clung to her mother’s hand as they jumped over the burning rubble in the streets.
I’ve spoken to people who remember the war—but this was different. The people that I’ve spoken with certainly had a hard time, but they were living on the west coast of America. The closest bombs fell in Hawaii. That’s not to minimize these people’s fear and sacrifices and loss—but speaking to someone who has watched their neighborhood streets burn and seen Stormont painted black…well. It offers a different perspective—a perspective that I wouldn’t have had if it weren’t for tea, biscuits, and friendship circles.
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